Is our justice system optimal? Did we make a mistake when we removed the “Quid Pro Quo” doctrine? How efficient that “eye for an eye” principle really was? Are we really “evolving” or are we breeding the instant killers and a society that just doesn’t give a fuck?
Maybe my story will make you think about the western legal system and the way we are weighing the severity of the crime.
One moment she’s there, waving. The very next, a car is smashing into her at full speed.
I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell didn’t want to see him walking out of the prison in a couple of years and moving on with his life while my wife, the mother of my three children, is lying buried under six feet of the dirt.
A husband left without his devoted and loving wife. The children left without their caring mother.
And for what?
So that those who deliberately get themselves in a drunken state and then drive a car could be rehabilitated?
So they could simply “move on” after serving some pathetic and puny sentence?
So that we could all read the tragic news and thank God that it didn’t hit us and our loved ones?
It takes a second for your life to change. A little more than a blink of an eye to see how your person gets swept away in front of your eyes just because some fuck decided to drink to exhaustion and then refused to take the cab or to call someone to get him.
Well, not on my watch. Not in my world.
It was a pleasantly warm, spring Tuesday evening and my wife, Gabriela, came back from work just to pick me and our kids so we could all go to see a movie. She stopped the sedan across the street. The four of us were waiving at her as we were approaching the sidewalk.
She opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle.
Out of nowhere, without any alert, a car smashed into the door while she was waving back to us.
The force of impact was tremendous. The door simply smashed into her body, almost cutting her in half.
Time has stopped. Everything went dark.
First, the silence. The shock. You simply can’t believe what just happened in front of your eyes. It’s like watching a really good movie that makes you forget how it’s fiction.
A second later, everything comes back. Your mind starts screaming. You are forgetting about everything else and just run.
The red Ford SUV that hit her has stopped some twenty yards away. I could see it with the corner of my eyes.
Her body, completely massacred, was right there, in front of me. Right across the house where she was raising our three children. Where we were making love over and over again. Where she planted all those roses. Right in front of the eyes of her children.
Dead. Butchered. Innocent.
You can’t imagine what something like that does to your state of mind. I can just hope and pray that you never experience such pain.
I turned my head to the right. The driver was slowly getting out of the vehicle. A second later, he started walking towards me.
Little did he know that, in that exact moment, he was staring in a face of death.
I didn’t see the man standing in front of me, crying and saying how sorry he is. I saw the nemesis. A parasite. The plague-carrying rat that must be exterminated.
It all happened in a blink of an eye.
He was standing in front of me, less than a yard away, reeking on alcohol. His face was red. Eyes full of tears. His mouth was saying something but I couldn’t hear the words. I just reached for his head with my both hands and twisted it with the force of the Almighty.
The cracking sound of the snapped bones was so unbelievably loud. I could feel the weight of his dead body pulling my arms down so I just released him and got back to my wife. I wanted to somehow close those beautiful blue eyes so she wouldn’t witness the tragedy that’s about to happen.
Her three kids, that she so adored will soon be left on the mercy of the social service since none of us had any living relatives.
But I just didn’t care about any of that. In that brief moment, I was the judge, the jury, and the executor. I was the revenge.
Can you believe that the judge actually asked me if I feel remorse for my deed? Can you believe that shit?
I told her that nothing would thrill me more than to resuscitate his ass and snap his neck again. Maybe slower this time so he could really feel it.
I just don’t get that hypocrisy.
How did we come to the point where we are spending human and financial resources on rehabilitation of the scum and forgetting about the innocent victims in less than 48 hours? How can someone turn himself into a lethal weapon and be pardoned, even though he used that weapon to take an innocent life?
No! I’m not fucking sorry for snapping his goddamn neck and I’d do it again, without hesitation.
As expected, I got sentenced. 15 years minimum and then they will think about whether I should be released on probation. They tried to justify my sentence with something about me not showing the remorse and consequently failing to send a message to the potential vigilantes and all of those who are thinking about taking the justice in their own hands.
My kids ended up in foster homes. I’m seeing them once a month if lucky.
The love of my life, mother of my children, my person, is dead.
I, behind the bars.
An unimaginable tragedy just because one man decided to drink for hours in some bar and then refused the cab the bartender called for him. He is the man. He can drive himself home. “Who the fuck you think you are, calling a cab for me? Do I look like some incompetent bitch to you?” The bartender remembered his words just a moment before that drunken ass left the bar and sat in his vehicle.
15 minutes and 23 seconds later, he turned left and entered our street. The camera captured that decisive moment. Decisive, because, as it turned out, he made the wrong turn. His intoxicated brain couldn’t distinguish left from right. A right turn and none of this would’ve happened.
10 seconds later, he ran into my wife, breaking almost every bone in her body and killing her on the spot.
75 seconds after he killed her, I snapped his neck.
16 minutes and 48 seconds. That’s all it takes from one irrational and irresponsible decision to death and destruction of entire families.
Yes, I’m actually writing this from the prison. Courtesy of the warden who, believe it or not, finds me innocent and respects what I did. One time, he even said that he wouldn’t think twice to do the same thing. So he allows me to speak my mind and share it with all of you who want to hear it.
How about you?
Would you let that fuck live? Or would you retaliate at the spot?
My question is simple:
Is our western legal system adjusted and optimized to protect those who are sitting on thrones, in case they “slip” and do something illegal, like running over a pedestrian while under the influence?
Is my punishment a weapon of deterrence for all of those who would react instinctively and snap the neck of a local congressman?
Yes, as a matter of fact, the scum who killed my wife was a hot shit political figure. According to several witnesses, he had a habit of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. An arrogant prick.
In one point of the process against me, I even turned to the jury, looked at the man sitting on the lowest bench and asked him what he would do if it would be his wife? Or his kid?
He just kept looking at the floor, happy that it was my wife and not his. Pleased and relieved that it wasn’t his hands that snapped the neck of the driver.
But that didn’t prevent him to find me guilty.
You’ve gotta ask yourself why do we have such puny sentences for crimes against our weak and innocent. For rapes and sexual abuse of the children. For drug trafficking. For human trafficking. For killing a person with the vehicle while under the influence.
I’ve seen guys released from the prison for any of those crimes in less than 10 years. The guy in a cell next to mine got out in 4 years even though he was selling some bad and deadly crack to the middle school kids, repeatedly.
Yet, I got 15 for snapping the neck of the guy who killed my wife.
Apparently, the judges are more sensitive about the guy who’s selling toxic and deadly substances to the 12-year-old kids than about a man who simply retaliated for the death of his own wife – his entire world.
When all things are considered, it becomes pretty clear that the revenge is at the top of the list of crimes. An eye for an eye will get your ass behind the bars for a long time.
Does that sound like a justice to you?
Let’s imagine, for a brief moment, that you have every right to terminate the life of a guy who killed your wife, or your kid, or your mother and father. Let’s say that our society is practicing that form of justice for a while now.
The guys like me are snapping necks of the reckless and drunken drivers who used their vehicles as the deadly weapons against our loved ones. The guys like me are shooting down the fucks who raped our wives and children.
Do you think that the number of those who would sit behind the wheel under the influence of some narcotic substance would increase or decrease? Would the number of rapes drop down significantly?
I’m willing to bet on my own life that the cops wouldn’t even bother to carry tests with them since you’d think twice before sitting behind the wheel of your car intoxicated.
Of course, that will never happen because “we are civilized.”
Getting the irony?
The planet’s ultimate killer. Nature’s most brutal and efficient predator, responsible for the annihilation of the entire species is trying to present himself as some spiritual, highly evolved and compassionate being.
Just because we are sitting in operas, doesn’t mean that we are not capable and willing to snap someone’s neck with or without the reason.
Because, at the end, the majority of our society has never been truly tested. We are sitting in our defensive bubbles, protected by the concrete walls and weapons, thinking that nothing bad can happen to us.
But when the shit hits the fan, and something does happen, our primitive instincts kick in and we are forgetting about the ballet, operas and animal rights. In that moment, we are what nature has made us – the bloodthirsty vindictive animals.
Yes, I agree that we must induce an essential level of control because you really don’t want 7,4 billion of the ultimate predators roaming all over the planet. So we have the laws and the cops and social indoctrination. We have religion. Hell. Satan. Eternal fire. All just to keep us constrained and relatively calm.
But trust me when I say: it takes just a brief moment for that entire facade to collapse and for the ultimate predator to resurface, asking for nothing less than blood for a blood. Is that so wrong?
Maybe, if you’ve never felt the pain I felt. Maybe, if you haven’t suffered the loss such as mine.
From my perspective, however, I had every right to revenge the death of my wife because nobody had the right to kill her. In my eyes, and the eyes of many who are familiar with my story or had experienced the similar tragedy, the only justice for something like this is QUID PRO QUO and nothing less than that!
Now, you may or may not agree with me, but just try to imagine the situation in which you are watching your person’s getting killed. Close your eyes and see it.
Yes, you can feel it in your guts. The adrenaline. The wrath!
And you are just mirroring. Imagine the actual situation.
Yours truly,
Jack Monroe
P.S. – I wanna thank Ballz Magazine for publishing my story when many others rejected me. And I wanna thank You, a good person who just read my rather long contemplation in a hope that you will leave an honest opinion. If I don’t answer immediately, don’t hold a grudge. My “online” time is limited for an obvious reason.
